The quiet story of "Silent Night"

I have a special fondness for the Christmas hymn, “Silent Night,” because its author had the surname “Mohr”—the same as my paternal grandmother, whom I never met. She died when my father was 12.I knew its origin had something to do with a broken-down organ.  Here it is—and more:

Picture yourself in Salzburg, Austria….yes, that beautiful city and the nearby breathtaking alps featured in the award-winning film, The Sound of Music, whose plot took place in World War 2.  Go back another hundred-plus years, to 1818, to a little hamlet about 15 miles north of Salzburg in the Tyrolean Alps named Obendorf. It consisted of one winding street lined with quaint cottages and shops. That year, young Josef Mohr arrived to become assistant priest at the newly-erected Church of St. Nicholas. Mohr soon made many friends, including the village schoolmaster and church organist, Franz Gruber. One day as they talked they lamented the existence of “the perfect Christmas hymn” in German.

We bought this child-friendly creche the first year
of our marriage.  Now grandchildren can play
with it as they learn the story of Jesus' birth

That particular year, a group of traveling players had arrived just before Christmas to put on a Nativity play at Mohr’s church. But the organ needed repair, so they moved the performance to the home of a local shop owner. A broken-down organ also complicated Mohr’s plans for Christmas services. How could they sing traditional carols without a booming organ to lead the way?
Mohr attended the play and was moved by its simplicity and beauty. As he walked home, he stopped at a favorite viewpoint overlooking Obendorf. Inspired by sparkling stars of that crisp night, he hurried home, lit a candle, and began writing the words to a Christmas poem. The next morning he took it to his friend Gruber, asking, “See if you can write a melody for these.” Gruber read the poem and reportedly replied, “Friend Mohr, you have it—the right song—God be praised.”

The organ couldn’t be repaired in time for Christmas, so Gruber wrote the music for guitar accompaniment. At the midnight Christmas eve service, Gruber played his guitar and sang bass. Mohr sang tenor. A young girls’ choir from the village harmonized the last two lines of each stanza.

Gruber and Mohr never intended for their carol to become famous. But when the organ builder came after the holidays to fix the organ, he heard the song being sung. He liked it, got a copy and took it to his home about eight miles away. Soon it was included in concerts throughout Austria and Germany, billed as a “Tyrolean Folk Song of unknown origin.”

Two decades after its first performance, it was performed in the United States by a group of Austrian singers. It would soon be translated into English and several other languages.

War again engulfed the world, this time what became known as World War I.  One of the officers fighting for the Germans, Walter Kirchhoff, had been a tenor with the Berlin Opera. In 1914, on a clear-cold Christmas eve night, when the shooting had stopped, Officer Kirchhoff felt moved to step forward and sing “Silent Night”—first in German, then in English. His trained voice carried far on that crisp night. The British knew the song and sang back.
Gradually, the troops crawled forward into No Man’s Land for a brief Christmas truce. Soldiers who wrote home about it said things like, “You won’t believe this. It was like a waking dream.”

Yes, a silent, holy night.